Tag: offshore

This post lingers in my mind for quite a while now. Caused by the circumstance that I happen to work as a scientific manager for a marine project that investigates the north sea, I learn incredible aspects about the seas of our planet on a daily basis. To be very clear here: I’m NOT a marine scientist and NOT an expert at all, but nevertheless I’m not seldom shocked by the big problems regarding the sea the actual experts are dealing with. Because of a variety of reasons (many of them political or economical) the media report only rarely about them. I would really like to change that and will share some of my new acquired knowledge with you today.

Did you know that…

…the pacific oyster can be found at more and more places across the coast of the North sea (which is nice, if you like to eat oysters, but may be harmful when you like to walk barefoot in the sand)?

…even for sea scientists it’s hard to tell you how the sea floor in the North Sea actually looks like (because most of the floor is sandy and in constant motion)?

…the migration of birds in swarms above the sea happens mostly by night and is incredible hard to predict (And did you ever wonder where all the birds are reappearing from in spring so suddenly?!)?

…there are laying tons of military weapons in our seas (and it’s extremely complicated to get these out – which one has to do in case they are licking toxic substances or still explosive)?

…one of the BIGGEST current environmental problems is the plastic litter in the sea (which is in many cases very, very small and called micro-litter)?

…the offshore industry is not only a big chance to solve our energy problems, but also in many cases an incredible big problem for our environment (because of so many facts it’s impossible to state them all in this post, but here are a few examples: With the construction of the mills, you change the sea floor, which discriminates some species and allows the settling of invasive species. The open sea is a continuous system with the wadden sea and no one knows what the changes offshore will cause in the wadden sea. Porpoise and other marine animals have to suffer inapprehensible high volumes of noise not only because of the machines of the running systems, but especially during the construction of the mills. …)?